It's the only way promotion and relegation will work. You can't expect a part time club to go full time in a matter of months and flourish. The last few teams who have been promoted have operated full time squads in the championship.

[iAlthough the financial detail has still to be ironed out, it is thought Super League clubs would receive distributions in 2015 and 2016 that are broadly similar to what they receive now, which is around £1.3million a year.

Under the split option, the Championship clubs would receive payments ranging from £150,000 to £650,000, depending on league positions.[/i

[urlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyleague/10173356/Super-League-to-be-cut-to-12-teams-from-2015-season.html[/url

That's a very strangely worded article. How can the SL clubs be receiving broadly the same payments, plus additional money? They are receiving more money, why pretend different

I think the only other feasible way would be to move the Championship season to finish in mid-late July so that they at least have a decent head start on recruitment, as was the case when Widnes were the last part-time side to get promoted and not get tonked the following season (albeit I'm not 100% if Hull KR were full-time in 2006).

In terms of P&R, personally I feel the best way of determining the winner would be to promote the side who finishes top of the league, purely because they've proven over the whole campaign that they're the best side for that level, rather than risk having a wildcard side win the Grand Final and get promoted.

Ideally you keep franchising, put SL down to 12 and just have the best 12 franchises.
You have a franchise for 2 years and in those two years everyone who finished bottom 3 is assessed to who has the worst franchise, any of the lower league teams who aspire to enter SL then have to offer a better franchise proposal than the team deemed the worst franchise in SL to gain promotion. Simple

So the Aussies/Kiwis/South Sea Islanders and the odd Brit here and there who play in a 16 team league that is far more intense and physical than SL are just tougher than our guys because they seem to manage well enough.The poor things even manage to throw in 3 Origin games along the way for good measure.Then once the play offs start for the winner that another 4 games to deal with.A grand total of 37 games in one season.The NRL are even considering expanding their league so i cant see how reducing the SL to 12 teams from 14 is going to be good for anyone.
Its an entertainment industry and being totally selfish all i see is less oppurtunity to be entertained.How are we to attract more people to games if there are even less chances for them to come and see it for themselves.

This seems to me to be all about money and the top SL clubs who are never in a million years going to be involved in the p and r dogfight every year and the resulting boom and bust ethos that will prevail,have just handed themselves a nice big pay rise for doing less work.Wish i could get one of those jobs.Would be very interesting to see how the voting went on this one and which clubs were for it and against it.

All of this has got absolutely nothing to do with Championship Clubs.They are just getting the scraps handed down to them after SL have finished gorging themselves.

Just maybe if the RFL had done its job right and managed to get some decent Sponsorship and negotiated some half decent TV deals we wouldnt even be having this conversation.

I'm afraid this is fairly typical of supporters of P&R: they see the P but not the R. For the Championship season to finish in July in order to give the promoted club time to recruit a squad, the season would have to start in, what? December? So the relegated club - whose entire squad will no doubt have become free agents because of clauses in their contracts regarding what happens if/when the club is relegated - have two months to build an entire squad from scratch, restructure the club to part-time operation and do preseason training. It seems not only do you want a club to be relegated, you want them to be handicapped as well.

So will the teams play each other 3 times or are we (the fans) going to be treated to a mere 11 home games in a season?

The relegated team is much better equipped to deal with a step down than the promoted team is equipped to step up, which is why the priority should be to give the promoted team a fighting chance unlike the last time we had P&R.

Not sure how you get to 37 games. NRL clubs play 24 regular season games plus a max of 4 playoff games plus a max of 3 State of Origin games. That's a max of 31.
SL plays 27 regular league games, a max of 5 Challenge Cup games and 4 playoff games. For a total of 36. Yes the NRL is more intense, but the NRL also have bigger squads. To then increase that number by 8 further games to 44 is madness in my view. As is the opinion that the off-season is too long.
Id keep the number of games to what it is now but restrict the amount of domestic games a player in the ETS can play to 27 (disregarding playoffs) whilst increasing the amount of internationals.

Correct , which is exactly the crux of the matter, the answer is improve the Championships and the clubs in them, that will solve a multitude of issues within the game , however it needs more than words fron Nigel ,unfortunatly that is all he is any good at